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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316283">The Cyan Apple and The Nightmare World</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcticMizikio/pseuds/ArcticMizikio'>ArcticMizikio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Undertale (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(ill add more tags when i have more chapters i guess), AU, Alternate Universe, Dreamtale, Gen, Illustrated, Illustrations, Nightmare World, dunno what to add, thats pretty much it :/, this story was based on a dream i had btw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:21:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316283</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcticMizikio/pseuds/ArcticMizikio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Dreamtale AU that happens in a mysterious, nightmarish world, with only a cyan apple. It focuses on Dream and Nightmare's relationship and their discoveries about their land.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. =Meet the Adventurer=</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the darkness of the sky and breeze of the cold wind, a young man adventures through the forest. The purple leaves of the tall, blueish trees fall on the ground as the autumn season is at its start.</p>
<p>This young man’s name is Dream! He’s one of the local guardians, but he takes much more interest in exploring their land since it is still so full of mysteries to be discovered. This time he’s heading to a small temple that can barely be seen in the distance because of all the vegetation growing on it, which makes the place look extremely old, which it certainly is.</p>
<p>He walks carefully through the cyan foliage, avoiding as many enemies as he can. Even if he has a weapon and knows how to defend himself, the creatures of the land are quite aggressive, so getting into a fight with too many of them is certainly a death wish! And dying in an adventure surely isn’t what he has in mind, especially because if he died it would take ages for someone to find out about it, and his dear partner would suffer from his loss, and just the thought of them suffering is already unbearable.</p>
<p>As he approaches the temple, he sees a few monsters gathered around the entrance. Trying to attack any of them would be too risky, it would alarm the others and he would get outnumbered there! It had to be more tactical… Slowly, he took a rock from the ground, big enough to make out as a good distraction, but also small enough to not be troublesome to grab and throw quickly. And just like that, he threw it! It hit a tree trunk and fell on the grass around it, making most of the monsters alarmed enough to look closely, leaving only two behind that apparently either didn’t listen or didn’t take interest in what was going on. But two was easy enough to take out by himself.</p>
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<p>Careful and quickly, he ran to the two creatures left by the temple’s door, sliding under one of them and using his dagger to cut it open, and then rapidly rushing to the other and cutting its throat open. As both fell into the tall grass, Dream entered the temple, making sure to partially slide one of the larger rocks lying around to prevent any other creature to enter with him.</p>
<p>The temple was jade-colored, with a few sparkles of cyan as a decoration. Dream lit a torch, its blue fire lighting the temple as he walked down the stairs, paying close attention to where he was stepping to not trigger any traps.</p>
<p>The walls were full of carvings, geometrical drawings of beasts and what appeared to be some kind of cult. Dream loved to go around these mysterious places, all of the forgotten histories the walls alone could tell, it was fascinating! When he’s done exploring one of those ruins he takes his journal and sketches all that he sees in the best of his abilities, that are pretty great after so many years doing it. His journal is more for sketching, with a few notes here and there, but writing isn’t really his thing, after all, it’s way nicer to show people drawings that are almost identical to the real thing than describing it, not everyone is brave enough to enter those places themselves.</p>
<p>As he dived deeper and deeper inside the temple the carvings started to take entire walls for a single scene, which usually meant he was getting closer to some relic room or something of the likings.</p>
<p>This temple looked to be themed with some sort of ritual, as the drawings showed gatherings with a lot of symbols around and a central figure. The main one that remained in all of the panels was a person with a lot of jewelry and a giant scepter, their horns were bigger than any other he had ever seen. They were taking another person with them, one that also looked quite tidy, but was chained.</p>
<p>The bigger and central panel showed the chained person being thrown in an abyss with a lot of other items around, falling right into what looked like the mouth of an enormous creature with a bizarre appearance. It was hard to tell if those ancient civilizations worshiped the monster out of fear or admiration, but Dream’s people worshiped a tree spirit, so he couldn’t really judge, they would probably think their divinity was weird as well. He always got fascinated by the monster, it was like they even should meet, but of course, the creature was probably dead by now, if it was even real, to begin with. But a man can dream.</p>
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<p>In the middle of his almost hypnotic admiration for the walls, his attention was shifted to a distant groan in the dark, likely from a monster that got in there earlier. Dream took out his dagger and prepared himself to attack whatever was in there, waving his torch ahead of him, trying to light up his way a little more.</p>
<p>He carefully entered the room where the noise came from. The place seemed way more damaged than the rest of the temple, which was a huge shame, as some valuable lore could have been there, but it was also a huge alarm, a regular-sized monster wouldn’t be able to do that much damage. And just as he thought, he felt a warm blow of air on his back, like a breath, and it wasn’t from a small creature, not at all, it felt like a huge one…</p>
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<p>Slowly, Dream turned to the monster, it was a huge centipede-like creature, it was so big it could easily eat him entirely! But fighting the fear on his hear and eager to survive, Dream waved the fire at the centipede, making it step back a little, allowing him to have more room for movement.</p>
<p>The creature charged at him angered, hitting the wall as Dream dodged its massive body, making the temple tremble a little. He stabbed the monster’s back, making it let out a scream of pain and trying to charge at him once again. In a quick motion, Dream sliced the top of the centipede’s mouth when it charged at him, cutting deep and wide in an attempt to kill it.</p>
<p>Full of gooey blood on his face and hands, Dream took out the dagger and the creature fell on the ground, its head partially sliced in two. Victory, whoever, was far from reach, as the death of the bigger centipede alarmed what appeared to be an entire colony of them, that started to crawl from the walls, going on his direction. Dream looked around, it was too many! He couldn’t possibly take all of them out with just a dagger and a torch.</p>
<p>Pained from the situation, he accepted defeat on this one and ran away from the temple, dashing throw the corridors and stairs to leave as fast as possible. He really hoped that the colony didn’t damage the temple, it would be such a loss! And the bigger mural with the divinity caught his attention so much, he really wanted to come back to at least draw that one.</p>
<p>As he ran he noticed fewer and fewer centipedes were bothering to follow him upstairs, so he would be clean already when he reached the top, which was great because if there were more monsters outside it would be a problem to have to rush his way through them and back to the kingdom.</p>
<p>Reaching surface again, he peeked through the rock and looked around. No monsters! Lucky bastard! Dream moved the rock just enough so he could get out more comfortably, and then proceeded to head back. Sad because his exploration ended up disastrous, but a bit happy that he had the chance to at least see that large area. When he comes back he’ll make sure to bring more heavy gear to clear that place. He was determined to explore the entirety of the temple! And so would it be.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. =Meet the Sorcerer=</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Walking in the dark, enormous and quiet library, only visible by the faint light coming from the lantern, is the guardian, or as he liked to title himself, the Sorcerer. His name is Nightmare! And like always, he’s here looking for ancient books with advanced magic knowledge to better his abilities.</p>
<p><br/>Being the chosen one to be the new guardian makes his free time very little, as the amount of work he has to do is immense, of course, his partner is there to help him, but even splitting the work, it takes a lot of their time. Thankfully enough, they always have at least one free day in the week, and while his partner is outside doing whatever it is he thinks he’s doing, he prefers to stay in the Great Temple, more specifically, in the underground library. Such a magical place, full of ancient knowledge, but the entire place doesn’t seem to be touched since ages… Did the previous guardians never take any kind of interest in it? Shame really…</p>
<p><br/>At last, he was willing to dive into the mysteries of the place, and of course, clean and organize the mess it was! Clearly the people that were there couldn’t even bother to organize the books in topics, and now that was but another point on his ridiculously big list of things to do there.</p>
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<p>Organizing wasn’t the task of the day though! As much as darkness was something common on their lives, the library was a complete maze without any light source around! It was frustrating having to spend the entire day only looking for certain books and getting into the same corridor 5 times in a row, and when he finally found all of them, that day was already over and he had to go to bed to work in the next! Truly annoying.</p>
<p><br/>Nightmare dropped the book in the huge table at the center of the library, it was a book containing some minor spells, one of them being a permanent flame-like light, the notes on it said it was commonly used to light-up spaces quickly, and he tested it a few times before, but never in something as big as the library. For his luck, some days ago he found a map! It was dirty and a little erased in a few parts but was good enough to help him visualize the places the lights should go.</p>
<p><br/>After staring at the map for a few seconds, he closed his eyes, lifting his hands, chanting the spell in the old arcane language only known by magic users such as Mages and Witches. His hands glowing as he moves them, hair floating as if gravity was being taken away from the environment.</p>
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<p>When he opened his eyes, all around him was lighten up in cyan light, the flames well placed in a way now everything could be seen without any worries.</p>
<p><br/>Looking around, finally able to see things clearly, he noticed a strange door in the back of the further area of the library, the wood used on it was different from the one used for the rest of the place, and it had weird symbols around, nothing he ever saw before. His curiosity was screaming for him to get closer and examine, how did he never see this before? He was certain that he had been around every part of the library! Yet… There it was, a highly suspicious thing who is by far small, and somehow he was able to always ignore its existence.</p>
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<p>Nightmare walked towards it, and the closer he got the more it felt like it was calling him, inviting him to enter and uncover its mysteries. He touched the door, skeptical about if he should do it or not, but as always, his curiosity got the best of him and thus the door was open. A chilling cold came from it, a stair going deeper underground was the only thing he could see, and it was going in a spiral, so there was no easy way to know how deep it was. The walls were made of a really dark stone, and even after summoning one more of the flame lights, it was hard to see around.</p>
<p><br/>Should he go in? Wasn’t it too dangerous? Surely, he knew enough magic to fight, but he wasn’t as brave as his more adventurous partner… He has the Cyan Apple with him all the times, but even if he knew the monster outside wouldn’t attack him when he holds it, he couldn’t help but wonder if it would always work.<br/>Standing there for way too long, Nightmare made up his mind, what is a story if the hero refuses the chance of adventure, right? Gathering up all his courage, he stepped inside and made his way down through the stairs. The place was freezing cold, regrets about not getting a heavier coat bothered his mind for some time, until it was completely taken over by the sudden vision in front of him.</p>
<p><br/>The stairs led to a dungeon-like place, the floor was covered in hues of blue and purple, he noticed weapons broken in pieces, scattered around, and worst… He noticed a few bones hiding in the shadows…</p>
<p><br/>Completely frozen by the sight before him, he only snapped out of it when a low groan came from the shadows. No time to lose, and completely panicking already, Nightmare ran the stairs up, wanting to get out of there the fastest he could! And when he finally got to the door, he closed it and in his best abilities, made a quick protection spell, in hopes nothing that was sleeping under there would get up and destroy everything.</p>
<p><br/>Falling on the ground, heart beating faster than ever, hands shaking, he tried to recompose himself. Think positive! He echoed to himself. There’s absolutely no way that thing is going to get out of there! If there even was a thing to begin with. Who knows? He might be hearing things. He hoped he was hearing things…<br/>After a minute or two laying on the cold, dusty wood ground, Nightmare got his breathing alright again, and finally was able to get up. He should talk to his partner later about that, he would probably enjoy adventuring there! Hopefully, his abilities would be enough for him to not die, of course…</p>
<p><br/>With a final glance at the door, Nightmare left the area, hoping to distract himself with the endless options of books the library had to offer.</p>
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